Parry wrenched himself away and dived for the cross. As he touched it, Lilah vanished and his body reverted to its normal state. He scrambled back into his robe.

"I regret I cannot give you extra life," Lilah said from across the chamber. "Only my Lord Lucifer can do that, and He really does not have that in mind for you at this time. But you can have much greater joy of your present life."

"Get away from me, temptress!" he gritted.

"Now, Parry, you know I do not respond well to that type of demand."

Parry nerved himself and forced a smile. "Please, if it pleases you, depart for a time."

"That's better." She disappeared.

Jolie returned. "I'm almost afraid to ask what happened this time."

"I'm almost afraid to tell you! She-she made me seem young again."

"She is getting to you," Jolie said sadly.

"No!" But they both knew that wasn't true.

Parry wrapped up his doc.u.ments by nightfall. "Tomorrow morning I go to the Abbot," he said.

Jolie didn't answer. She just gazed at him with love and resignation, and faded out.

He woke in darkness. A warm body was with him.

"Jolie!" he exclaimed.

"Guess again, lover," the demoness replied. "Though I will, if you ask me to, emulate her form and manner for your pleasure. I have absolutely no pride about that sort of thing; I want only to please you."

"But a day and night have not pa.s.sed!"

"I did not promise you a day this time, Parry. I promised you only a time. That time is done. Now I have returned to bring you all the joy your ghost-girl cannot bring you."

"Get out!"

"This game becomes tiresome. Make me." She rolled over, plastering a hot breast against him.

Parry opened his mouth-and she kissed it. He moved his legs-and she covered them with her own. He struggled, but she held him like the succubus she resembled. He finally got his hand on the cross and brought it in. "Oh, don't do that, lover," she protested. "Not when we are so close to making it."

He hesitated, then with sudden decision brought the cross down against her back. And she was gone, leaving him with an erection and sweaty covers.

Jolie did not appear, and for that he was thankful. The demoness was aggressive and blatant-but she had an impact. He had desired her infernal body! Had he been deliberately clumsy in finding his cross? Had he purposefully delayed in applying it? He was afraid he knew the answer.

There was indeed evil on his soul, and the demoness was exploiting it mercilessly.

In the morning Jolie returned. "She came to you at night," she said flatly. Parry nodded. "I thought for a moment it was you. I finally drove her away with the cross."

"Finally?"

"Jolie, I am a man! I thought I was a friar, but now I know I am not. I will take my disgrace and go away with you; then she will leave me alone."

"Will she, Parry?"

"She will have wreaked Lucifer's vengeance on me and the Order! I will be of no further use to her! And I will be with you when you are reanimated. Proof against further evil."

She relaxed. "I hope so, Parry!"

He squared his shoulders and walked out of his chamber and down the hall to the Abbot's office. He had not requested an audience, but knew the Abbot would see him. Indeed, Parry himself could have had the office, had he desired it. Now he was glad he had not; that diminished the potential disaster somewhat.

The demoness appeared before him, discreetly clothed. "You can't do it, Parry. You have too much to lose."

"The world has too much to lose if I do not," he said gruffly.

"But the world need lose nothing! I will help you in any way you desire."

"To fight your evil master? I doubt it."

"Try me, Parry."

"Don't try her, Parry!" Jolie protested. "She only means evil!"

"I know that," Parry said. He pushed on, leading with his cross, and the demoness vanished in her normal manner.

And reappeared elsewhere, also in her normal manner. "Parry, you have not given me that chance," she said urgently. "Parry, with my help you could become Pope!"

"You'd like that, wouldn't you!" he muttered. "A corrupt Pope, in liege with Lucifer!"

"It would not be the first time."

Parry halted. "You lie!"

Her lips twitched. "May **** strike me down if I have not spoken the truth."

"It's irrelevant," Jolie said. "We must get this done. Obviously it will be effective against her, or she wouldn't be opposing it so."

"You are right, ghost-girl," Lilah said, grimacing. "He will be of little use to my Master if he loses his position. There would then be nothing for it but to proceed to the lesser aspect of His vengeance, and send in the vampires."

"Vampires?" Jolie asked faintly.

"I have fought off possessed creatures before," Parry said.

"These are not possessed," Lilah said. "They are the real thing. They would come first for your animate ghost-girl, depriving her of her new body. You might find her less appetizing. Parry felt a chill of apprehension. The possessed could be cured, but true vampires were beyond that. There were ways to resist them, but it would be difficult for one of flawed virtue.

The threat to Jolie- "No," he said firmly. "This is a scare tactic. It shall not move me."

But Jolie, beside him, was fainter.

He reached the Abbot's door. He lifted his knuckle to knock.

"I will show you how to make your Inquisition truly effective against heretics," Lilah said.

"Why should you do that?" Yet Parry knew that the fact that he even questioned her meant that he was in doubt about his course.

"Because heretics are nothing to me or my Master, but your corruption is everything."

"A likely claim," Parry said, beginning to move his knuckle.

"Don't you understand, Parry-most heretics are incompetent ruffians. Seldom is a truly educated and dedicated man brought into Lucifer's service. You are worth more than all the rest."

"Before you said that it was Lucifer's vengeance that brought you here."

"That, too, is true. But His mode of it is devious. He never wastes an opportunity. He much prefers to corrupt you, so that not only do you serve His purpose, you know it is the worst possible perversion of your nature and of the faith of those who believe in you. You will suffer that realization for the rest of your life, even as you do ever-greater evil. That is the most exquisite nature of His vengeance. Perhaps you will even do such harm to the cause you once served that it makes up for all the mischief you have caused my Master."

"How can you tell me this, knowing I must reject this course?" Parry asked, appalled.

"That is part of the torture," she said. "You must know that you could have avoided all of it-and chose to enter into it instead, for the basest of reasons."

"What basest of reasons?" Parry demanded.

"l.u.s.t for a creature of h.e.l.l, despite the availability of the woman you loved in life."

"That's preposterous!"

"Is it, Parry? Then knock on that door." Lilah smiled cruelly, and her dress disintegrated, leaving her voluptuously naked.

Parry's arm muscles tensed-but his knuckles did not touch the door. He tried again, and again his hand did not move. He could not knock!

He looked around, seeking Jolie, but she was gone.

"No good, lover," Lilah murmured. "She knows what you know: you have accepted what I offer in your soul, and she is doomed."

"Jolie!" he cried with horror.

"Do not wail for her, mortal man. She has completed her onus, that bore down her soul despite an exemplary life. She has at last brought you to the evil you were destined for. Now she is free to go-and perhaps, if she is fortunate, my Lord will not treat her harshly."

"Jolie can't go to h.e.l.l!" he cried.

"She surely can't go to the other place."

"She must stay with me, to be my conscience, as always."

"Your conscience is doomed, Parry. You are one of us now.

"No!"

"No? Then knock on that door."

Again Parry tried, and again failed. Even to save the soul of his wife, he could not do it.

He collapsed against the door, wracked by sobs. What an awful failure this was, this failure of his will!

The demoness embraced him, stroking him here and there, stirring his l.u.s.t despite his grief. "Lover, this is only the beginning," she a.s.sured him. "You will rue this hour the rest of your life."

Parry was all too certain this was true.

Chapter 8.

LUCIFER.

Lilah led him back to his chamber. Parry went without resistance, stunned by his inability to do what he knew was right. The demoness really had corrupted him!

In the chamber, Lilah turned, her clothing fuzzing to fog and wafting away. "You have joined us, Parry, and now I shall reward you."

Parry gripped his cross. "No!" She walked toward him, her torso moving with rhythms of its own. "Yes."

He jabbed the cross at her midriff. It pa.s.sed through her without effect. She neither vanished nor screamed; she merely waited. "But-the cross!" he exclaimed, stunned.

"Parry, your icon is only as potent as the faith behind it. You have lost your faith. You can no longer invoke your prior G.o.d in your defense." She moved on in to him, and her hands went to his robe, opening it.

"Jolie!" he cried.

"She is gone, lover," Lilah said. "I am your woman now. But I want you to think of your ghost-girl as you indulge your carnal l.u.s.t with me, so that you can really appreciate the irony. She started your corruption, and I am completing it."

"Get away from that"' he cried, pushing at her. But it did no good. His right hand, holding the cross, was unable to touch her body at all, pa.s.sing freely through it, while his left came up against her plush right breast. There, the touch was all too tangible.

Meanwhile her hands were busy, efficiently baring his body. She moved the rest of the way in to him, pressing against him from thigh to breast, while his right hand continued to flail helplessly within her substance as if it did not exist. Then she quivered, and her belly seemed to stroke his while her hips rotated slowly.

"I beg of you-" he gasped, finally letting go of her breast.

She drew back. "I will always do what you ask, when you phrase it that way, Parry. But I believe you would really rather move on to the culmination."

"I am a friar!"

"You are a man." She glanced at his body significantly. "You can see that your body wants me."

Parry grabbed for his robe, to cover his aroused body. "You are a d.a.m.ned succubus!"

"Faint praise, Parry! I am much more than that. But if you really wish to wait for the raw s.e.x, I will wait. I have no carnal desire of my own, of course; I am only acting as my Lord Lucifer directs, to corrupt you suitably, and this is merely a single aspect of it. What other aspect would you prefer to start with?"

"No aspect! I don't want to be corrupted at all!"

"You are lying, Parry. That is good; you do need practice with that." Her left hand caught his right wrist, and lifted his hand back toward her left breast.